From the Editor-in-Chief of SOA World Magazine

Sean Rhody

Sean Rhody is the founding-editor (1999) and editor-in-chief of SOA World Magazine. He is a respected industry expert on SOA and Web Services and a consultant with a leading consulting services company. Most recently, Sean served as the tech chair of SOA World Conference & Expo 2007 East.

Web-development of every kind is one focus of Sybase PowerJ 3.0 (see Figure
1). In addition to a complete Java development environment, PowerJ comes with
a set of tools that differentiates it from other Java IDEs on the market.
These tools are PowerDynamo, a Web site hosting tool that allows you to drive
a Web site from a database; PowerSite, a Web site management tool; Adaptive
Server Anywhere, a small-footprint relational database; ObjectCycle, a source
code control package; and Enterprise Application Server. Sybase is also
lowering the price of PowerJ, placing it in the $600­$800 range. Given the
tools that come in the package, that's not an unreasonable price.
I'll begin my review by focusing on PowerJ itself. This is the third version
of PowerJ, and it's had several years to be polished. The IDE features
color-syntax highlighting, background compilation and drag... (more)

All right, I'm ready to admit that I made a slight miscalculation. Not an
error, necessarily...just a slight misjudgment when it came to the timing of
something. Back in January I made a set of predictions concerning the
industry, as I'm wont to do at the beginning of a new year. In those
predictions I stated that I didn't think we'd see any Enterprise JavaBean
products until the end of this year.
Unless you've been living under a rock, you know that EJB is the all-Java
equivalent of CORBA or COM. It's also the direction I see Java programming
headed toward for a number of reason... (more)

Sometimes I think no one reads the editorial. Normally I receive maybe no
more than fifty comments concerning any editorial. I kid myself that I do a
good enough job lining up the content for the magazine that no one has any
complaints, and that they post each month's editorial on a wall for all to
see. In reality, I hope it doesn't show up on that many dart boards ­ I know
programmers.
Our JavaOne issue (JDJ Vol. 4, issue 6) wasn't one of those times. I've been
writing about programming for over five years, and I've got to say that the
response to my "XML Mambo" column was nothi... (more)

My Forté
Here's an old joke. A guy in a strange town needs to get a haircut. There're
only two barbers in the town, but the guy doesn't know either of them. Which
one does he pick? The answer is the guy with the worst haircut. Why? Because
neither barber can cut his own hair, so the guy with the worst haircut is the
better barber.
What's this got to do with Java? Well, it reminds me of the strange position
that Sun has been in for the past several years. I think Java is one of the
most profound software concepts to ever come along, and there's no question
that Sun is the proud o... (more)

I may be somewhat unusual, but I've never bought anything at an online
auction. I've seen eBay, and one of my friends sold some of his collection of
valuable magazines (okay, comic books) on eBay, but I've never gone the whole
route and come home with the goods. I've thought about it a couple of times.
I recently built a computer from parts, and one of the places I looked for
motherboards had an auction, but they didn't have the board I wanted and
there was no way to post my own offer to buy.
Auctions consist of at least two different processes, if not three. There's
the straigh... (more)